


Distant Memories

by mystery_knight



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Deconstruction, F/M, Gen, community: asoiaf_exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 06:57:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystery_knight/pseuds/mystery_knight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeyne reflects on her involvement with Robb Stark many years after the War of the Five Kings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distant Memories

She was an old woman now, an unremarkable dowager of a unremarkable estate in a region of the western hills that had no gold. No one had called her Jeyne in many years; she was simply "Grandmother" now. In any case, the songs didn't mention her name. In the songs, the woman who brought about the Young Wolf's downfall was anonymous. 

_He marched west to visit retribution upon the westermen_  
And there he lost his heart to the fairest of maids  
He bed her and he wed her and his fate was sealed 

She had still been young and fair when she first heard that song sung. Yet she'd known she was only passably pretty, far from the fairest maiden of the westerlands. Why the singer had chosen to call her the fairest had puzzled her. Years later, she heard it sung at her oldest daughter's wedding, and she understood: a hero lost his heart, and his head, for only the most beautiful of women, anything less was not worth it. Would they blame her, then, if they knew she had not been a great beauty? For a certainty they would blame her if they knew the whole story. 

"Grandmother, will you not come with us?" asked her grandson's wife. "Everyone says it will be the grandest tourney ever seen."

"And I will win it!" declared her eldest great-grandson. He was newly knighted and believed himself to have the makings of a legend. 

Jeyne would very much have liked to watch him joust in his first real tourney, but the journey to King's Landing was too long and tiring for her at her age. "I am too old, such pleasures are for the young." She smiled to soften her words. 

They had tried before to convince her, and they tried again up to the morning they rode off, but Jeyne remained behind. Her eyes were no good for embroidery anymore, so she spent most of her days simply sitting in a sunny spot in the garden, alone with the memories of a long life lived. She thought more and more of her youth lately, of her girlhood at the Crag and the family she'd been born to. Her parents and her brothers and sister were all dead now, but they'd had long lives, all except poor sweet Raynald. 

Raynald had died at the Red Wedding, too, but there were no songs about him. Scarcely a year older than her, he and she had shared a bed as children. He had made up silly songs to lull her to sleep. The last time she'd seen him, he was carrying the Young Wolf's standard as they marched north. 

She remembered the night Robb Stark took the Crag. The howls of his wolf had struck terror into their hearts. The few men who had been left behind to defend the castle had tried their best, but between the fury of the northmen and the savagery of the wolf, they had almost all been struck down. 

She'd learned some herblore from her mother, who had learned it from her mother, so she had tried to help tend the wounded. She did what she could to help their own men first, but the anguished cries of the dying northmen had been impossible to ignore. She gave them water and a little of the herbs to dull pain. Then a bearded giant had grabbed her. She'd screamed. Everyone knew what happened to women when a castle was taken by the enemy. 

"King Robb took an arrow," the giant growled. "You will help care for him."

She'd been too relieved to be angry at being expected to take care of the man who had brought carnage to the Crag. 

He had been taken to the largest and best bed chamber in the castle, her parents' room. She wondered where her mother would sleep now. Then she saw him. He was much younger than she'd expected. He was also quite handsome, with deep blue eyes and curly auburn hair. He was the sort of man she would have been too shy to talk to under other circumstances. 

She was apprehensive at first, but he was nothing but courteous. His injury was not life-threatening, but he needed time to heal before he resumed his war march towards Lannisport. Her mother was furious, in private, when he decided to rest at the Crag. 

Jeyne continued to take him his meals and change his bandages, and he began to insist that she stay and talk. She had not found the heart to fault him for that. It had to be quite boring lying in bed with nothing to do all day. 

Then the raven came. 

He ordered them all out after the letter had been read. Jeyne was happy to go, she could not imagine what to say to him. No words would comfort her if her little brother was murdered so callously and by one she had considered a friend. Much later she had gone back to him, for despite his grief, his bandages still needed to be checked. 

She was rewrapping a bandage when he began to sob silently. His body shook from the sobs, but he didn't let a sound escape. She could think of nothing else to do but wrap her arms around him and hold him as she would any wounded creature in need of comfort. 

He talked then. He talked about Theon Greyjoy, whom he'd loved as a brother, and how he had sent him as envoy to Ironborn against the advice of his lady mother. He talked about his brother Bran, who had loved climbing and who had been crippled after a fall, and his brother Rickon, who was the fiercest and wildest of them, although he was the youngest. He asked how he could face his mother Catelyn now, afraid she would blame him for the deaths of her babes. 

"She will not blame you; you could not have known."

He fell silent after that. She began to think he had fallen asleep, but when she glanced down, his blue eyes were open. He kissed her, and she did not resist. She had no thought for her maidenhood or her reputation. He needed her and she gave herself. 

She awoke in the morning to find him already awake, a serious expression on his face. His voice was formal when he spoke. "I apologize for dishonoring you, my lady. I will not have you dishonored further; I would have your hand in marriage."

She had come to like Robb. But he was not simply Robb. He was the Young Wolf, the King in the North, a rebel and a traitor. Her own father and his men were part of Lord Tywin's army battling the Starks and the Tullys in the riverlands. He was the enemy. Jeyne fled the room without a word.

Her mother would learn of it when Robb went to her to talk about marriage, so Jeyne went to her first and confessed. Lady Sybell slapped her, but Jeyne had expected it.

"You stupid, stupid girl. I gave thanks to the gods these northern savages have not raped us, and you go and willingly lay with one! Who will marry you now?"

Her mother paced the room, thinking. At last, she declared, "You will have to accept Stark if he is fool enough to have you."

"I don't want to marry him," Jeyne pleaded. "I don't want to be part of them."

Her mother seized her by her hair. "You made your bed and now you'll lie in it."

She had not understood her mother's intent, not then. 

She wed Robb Stark in their small sept and pretended she was happy to do so. It was then that she realized what Robb had sacrificed to save her honor. The Frey lordlings and their men left, shouting insults meant for her to hear, calling her a whore. They had comprised a sizable chunk of Robb's army, and their loss was damaging to him. 

Looking back, what a foolish young woman she'd been. She'd fancied herself the heroine of a child's tale come true. She did not like to remember that she'd loved Robb Stark, but she had. She could not say whether she loved him before marrying him, but she certainly loved him after.

"Love does not put bread on the table," someone had said once. In their case, love did not replenish the ranks of Robb's army, nor did it provide another path to the North. For those things, he needed House Frey. 

Once House Westerling had been a grand family. One of its daughters had even wed one of the Targaryen kings. However, that was a long time ago. Her father had wed her mother, the granddaughter of a spice merchant, for her dowry. House Frey, meanwhile, was rich, and fielded thousands of soldiers, and Lord Walder's numerous sons and daughters had married into most of the prominent families in the Seven Kingdoms. Robb had issued a grievous insult to the Freys when he wed her. 

There was nothing she could do for him. She bemoaned this fact aloud one night in bed. He kissed her sweetly, and told her there was something she could do. He needed an heir. With his brothers dead and his sisters held captive, there would be no one to rally the North if he should fall in battle.

Her mother had started bringing her tea every morning after the wedding. She'd made a face and pushed it away after sipping the first cup. 

"Drink it," her mother had urged her, "For your future."

It was natural to assume that the potion was meant to help her conceive. She'd never had any doubt at the time, had she? Jeyne did not remember. 

She remembered how it all ended. Robb's uncle Edmure Tully was to wed the Frey bride in his place, and the Freys would forgive Robb and return to his cause. She cried when Robb told her that he was not taking her with him to the wedding. She felt sure he was ashamed of her, and she recalled all too well one of the Freys announcing that his sister would not mind marrying a widower. 

Robb had become angry with her for the first time. "Never doubt my love, Jeyne. Lord Walder is a prideful man, and he would take your presence in his hall as a further insult. I cannot afford to antagonize him."

He'd ridden off with his bridegroom uncle, his lady mother, his wolf, and his army, leaving her behind at Riverrun. Only his great-uncle Brynden Tully remained, charged with holding the castle and protecting her. She'd sobbed for days, and neither her mother's scorn nor Brynden's attempts to console her had been able to make her stop.

After news reached them of the slaughter that was to become known as the Red Wedding, she could only start crying again. Her mother had been strangely uncaring. It was not until Riverrun was preparing to be besieged and her little sister Eleyna fearfully asked what would become of them, that her mother and her mother's brother Rolph exchanged a look. 

Her mother had told them, then, of the letters she'd exchanged with Lord Tywin Lannister before they'd left the Crag. "We are protected," she said, and Jeyne had realized that it was always meant to end this way. 

The sun was going down. The cook's little boy came to remind her of dinner, but Jeyne was loath to leave her spot. She had her meal brought to her, and ate watching the birds coming home to roost in the trees. 

Lord Tywin had not bothered to inform the Freys of his bargain with Sybell Westerling, or perhaps the Freys had simply not cared. They killed her brother Raynald along with the rest of Robb Stark's people. 

For a time Jeyne had desired to take holy vows and become a Silent Sister. Her sorrow, caused by loss and made worse by guilt, had seemed unbearable and unending. She was glad now her mother had refused to allow it. 

"Grandmother, if you had one wish, what would you wish for?" her youngest granddaughter had asked her last winter. 

"To see you with sweet children of your own, child," she'd answered. But the truth was if some magical being came to her and offered her anything at all in the world, she'd wish Robb Stark had never come to the Crag. Perhaps Raynald would have lived to see grandchildren of his own. Robb would have married a Frey girl and retaken the North, or perhaps he would not have survived his war against the Iron Throne, but whatever his fate, she would be no part of it.

However, there were no magicians to grant wishes of any kind. What had happened, had happened. There was no changing that. There was nothing to do but keep on living. The moon was rising ever higher in the sky. Jeyne rose and went inside. She slept well that night.


End file.
